Keith S. Lockwood

Keith S. Lockwood, Ph.D., was born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1964 and grew up in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. His experiences growing up in a working class environment came to define his altruism and the necessary provision of support for the struggles of the individual against social forces exerting exploitative influences on one's surplus labor in a zero sum culture.

Lockwood is best known for his work as a fierce advocate of people who belong to social and language minority cultures and disabilities as well as the economically marginalized. His work is best characterized by a staunch philosophical direction in economic determinism, Friere's critical pedagogy and the historical materialism of Marx.

Lockwood was a teacher of children who are deaf or hard of hearing in the New York City public schools for 13 years, and continues to be a force in the implementation of democracy, deaf culture and constructivism, academic or social, in the education of deaf or hard of hearing children. While he worked as a teacher of children who are deaf or hard of hearing in a historically oral school his ability to faciltiate school based language and instructional reform was enhanced by his ability as an interpreter in American Sign Language and the practical application, thereof, was of particular note.

Lockwood's experiences with deaf or hard of hearing children came to reinforce his long standing view points on constructivist practice and Jean Piaget's work in the psycho-developmental school of thought. Moreover, His study "Contemporary Reading Practice in an Urban Day School for Children who are deaf or hard of hearing," is regarded as an authentically modern interpretation of Piagetian theory; and a progressive application of Lev Vygotsky's psycho-linguistic theory in terms of the zone of proximal development correlated to the literacy education of children who are deaf or hard of hearing. The implications of his work characterize learning as an ongoing process of individual re-education or improvement of self knowledge through culturally mediated language and comprehension. Accordingly, Deaf children, individually and as a group mediate developmental benchmarks while constructing a visually oriented language for each student's unique semiotic equalibrium.